Hi, I’m David Portelli 👋

With over 8 years in product development, I balance hands-on product design with leadership duties. My journey spans startups to public companies, working on both customer-facing experiences and internal tooling. I’m passionate about crafting products from scratch - turning ideas into innovative solutions - and thrive in ambiguity and complexity.

Skills 🏄‍♂️

Selected achievements ⭐️

Work experience 🏔️

Principal Product Designer | MrQ

🗓️ Jan 2023 - Present

Collaborating with

• Collaborating with key internal stakeholders, including: CEO, CTO, Product owners, Head of Design, Head of CRM and head of Data amongst others, in order to align on vision strategy, roadmap and backlogs.
• Collaborating with external stakeholders, including: Product owners and Developer Consultants.
• Collaborating with Back-end and Front-end Developers, Product Designers and Communication Designers to ensure quality releases.

Responsible for

• Shaping product visions for internal proprietary tools and customer facing products.
• Conducting competitor analysis research to ensure a competitive propositions.
• Proposing metrics to gauge product performance.
• Organising and moderating stakeholder workshops and interviews to understand and shape requirements.
• Presenting and articulating design to key stakeholders, developers and other designers.
• Designing, maintaining and scaling design systems for: Casino, Games and Tooling.
• Collaborating closely with developers to find solutions to problems and help ensure quality implementations.
• Guiding developers by breaking design down into user stories and assigning them accordingly.
• Writing product release QA user stories, and testing dev work against stories to ensure quality releases.
• Ensuring consistency in design across products and features.
• Guiding junior team members to solve problems and help them grow.

Designing (UX/UI)

• Responsible for designing UX, UI and prototyping.
• Designing internal proprietary tooling including: Promotions and rewards software, CMS software, A/B testing software.
• Designing customer facing feature sets relating to: Conversion funnels, Payments experiences, Account and KYC, Casino.
• Building design systems to support building and scaling proprietary games including: Tower, Scratch, Keno, Crash, Mines, Dice, Gems.

Product Design Consultant | Various companies

🗓️ Feb 2022 - Present

Overview

• Consulting in various spaces including FinTech, Productivity, Tooling and Omni channel messaging.
• Interviewing clients to identify and clarify core needs.
• Proposing project objectives and defining next steps.
• Building product backlogs and prioritising objectives for ROI and cost efficiency.
• Helping clients establish a design function by helping with recruitment, onboarding and team processes.
• Conducting user and competitor research.
• Creating flow charts, journey mapping and low fidelity designs for early alignment.
• Responsible for UX, UI and prototyping.
• Creating high fidelity, finished designs together with documentation.
• Building and scaling design systems.
• Sharing video walkthroughs for alignment, feedback and documentation.

Senior Product Designer | MrQ

🗓️ Sep 2021 - Dec 2022

Collaborating with

• Working closely with stakeholders: Head of product, Head of data, CTO, front-end engineers, back-end engineers, product designers, communication designers.
• Interviewing stakeholders to clarify and align on project outcomes and goals.
• Structuring projects by defining goals, breaking projects into phases, specifying and documenting details.
• Proposing product improvements based on business goals, competitor research and user needs.

Responsible for

• Responsible for designing and maintaining all customer journeys end to end.
• Conducting research to understand user behaviour, identify issues and opportunities.
• Creating low fidelity designs for quick, cross functional alignment and removing bottlenecks.
• Creating high fidelity designs and prototypes together with developer specs.
• Creating flow charts, journey mapping and low fidelity designs for early alignment.
• Responsible for UX, UI and prototyping.
• Conducting user testing to bullet-proof design and increase customer success.
• Creating video walkthroughs of projects to help align teams and document design.
• Providing feedback on upcoming and existing features to help improve overall outcome.
• Structuring and maintaining Figma projects.

Designing (UX/UI)

• Designing UX and UI for mobile, tablet and desktop.
• Building and scaling design systems for customer facing and back office products.
• Designing user account flows: Settings, Account verification, Regulatory flows.
• Designing a scalable game UI system to power all MrQ in-house games.
• Building back office tooling: In-house CMS.
• Architecting content driven experiences to make contents findable and personalised.
• Designing landing pages for company profile, marketing and other.

Other

• Designing, documenting and implementing employee onboarding strategy.
• Interviewing and assessing design candidates.
• Contributing to structuring company’s documentation framework in Notion.

Product Design Lead | Casumo

🗓️ Mar 2021 - Sep 2021

Responsible for

• Working closely with head of design, head of product, CPO, product designers, developers and other stakeholders.
• Responsible for overlooking product design team.
• Defining vision and strategy with stakeholders.
• Facilitating stakeholder exercises / workshops.
• Shaping and communicating product roadmap with design team.
• Distributing work to a remote design team of 6.
• Providing thorough design feedback to team; helping them get untangled.
• Setting up and owning product design ops for:
• Team rituals.
• Processes.
• Templates.
• Knowledge base.
• Professional development.
• Moderating all design, routine sessions such as stand-ups, project kick offs and design demos.
• Mentoring design team.
• Helping design team define and work on their career development.
• Interviewing and recruiting designers.
• Responsible for all admin work pertaining to design team Human Resources.
• Structuring and maintaining Figma projects.
• Creating flow charts, journey mapping and low fidelity designs for early alignment.
• Responsible for UX, UI and prototyping.

Product Designer | Casumo

🗓️ Feb 2017 - Mar 2021

Responsible for

• Working closely with product managers, designers and developers.
• Responsible for designing and maintaining all customer journeys end to end.
• Interviewing stakeholders to define project requirements.
• Conducting in-house, quantitative and qualitative research.
• Designing for multiple, regulated and unregulated markets.
• Creating flow charts, journey mapping and low fidelity designs for early alignment.
• Responsible for UX, UI and prototyping.
• Designing, prototyping and testing for:
• Regulatory features.
• Conversion funnels.
• User on boarding.
• Payment experiences.
• Search and browsing experiences.
• Gamification and loyalty mechanics.
• Back office tools.
• Design systems.

- Producing rapid prototypes, hi fidelity prototypes and video walkthroughs of design to communicate ideas.

• Pitching product to various disciplines.
• Building and maintaining the products design system.
• Documenting product knowledge.
• Providing thorough feedback to peer designers on their assignments.
• Ensuring design is well implemented into code.
• Structuring and maintaining Figma projects.
• Reporting product bugs.
• Interviewing and recruiting designers.

Head of Art and UX | Hero Gaming

🗓️ Jul 2015 - Nov 2016

Responsible for

• Working closely with stakeholders, designers and developers.
• Setting product vision with founder/CTO and CEO.
• Proposing product development ideas which increase customer success and commercial value.
• Responsible for overlooking communication and product design.
• Distributing work to design team of 6, including remotees.
• Designing, prototyping and testing on demand for:
• Gamification and loyalty mechanics.
• In-house games.
• Conversion funnels.
• User on boarding.
• Search and browsing experiences.
• Landing pages.
• Payment experiences.
• Setting design team to tackle previously outsourced work internally.
• Interviewing and recruiting designers.
• Mentoring design team.
• Creating flow charts, journey mapping and low fidelity designs for early alignment.
• Responsible for UX, UI and prototyping.

Creative Director | Hero Gaming

🗓️ Apr 2014 - Jul 2015

Responsible for

• Working closely with founder/CTO, stakeholders and developers.
• Responsible for designing product MVP.
• Validating MVP with early customers.
• Shaping the brand across product and marketing touch points.
• Designing, prototyping and testing for:
• Gamification and loyalty mechanics.
• In-house games.
• Conversion funnels.
• User on boarding.
• Search and browsing experiences.
• Landing pages.
• Payment experiences.
• Building the design team.
• Outsourcing design to remote freelancers.
• Recruiting and collaborating with third party studios.
• Providing feedback and approving work by designers, freelancers and agencies.
• Creating flow charts, journey mapping and low fidelity designs for early alignment.
• Responsible for UX, UI and prototyping.

Visual Designer | Various companies

🗓️ Jul 2007 - Apr 2014

Education 🎓